Tech Reporter's Year with AI: Voice Tools Boost Productivity, But Caution Advised

If you're using artificial intelligence, odds are you're looking for the best way to integrate it to make your life easier. Your experiments may be piecemeal: Try out a new app today, test a new chatbot next month.

Tech reporter Joanna Stern went all in. Over the course of a year, the former Wall Street Journal reporter and founder of tech media venture New Things tested AI everything — lawn mower, sunglasses, boyfriend. She documented the experience in her book, "I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything."

After her yearlong experiment, she says she let some lackluster applications, including a T-shirt folder and other household robots, fall by the wayside. But one has proven to be a standout: AI voice tools.

During her AI immersion, Stern got into a habit of talking to ChatGPT's Voice Mode, which lets users speak to the AI chatbot and receive spoken responses. "I was talking to ChatGPT in the car almost daily," she tells CNBC Make It — and it's a habit she's kept even after her book was published.

It 'sounds so human'

While writing her book, Stern used ChatGPT and Claude to make "BookBots," or custom AI bots that had access to her outlines, research, and transcripts, and could copyedit, crunch numbers, brainstorm, and more, she writes. She says she often talked to her BookBots through her AirPods to help her stay "on track."

Talking as a mode of processing ideas feels "natural," she says, and often "sparks another idea." It "sounds so human," Stern adds, noting that she felt the voice AI models and their responses improved over the course of the year. At the same time, there's less pressure. "We're not really going to be super embarrassed if our chatbot doesn't think we know how to spell or we said something wrong," she says. AI is "not really judging me."

Stern recalls one instance in which she was driving and her head was "buzzing with ideas," she writes. With her son occupied watching a movie in the backseat, "it was just me, the open road, and ChatGPT ... [working] through the big themes of the book with the AI as my sounding board," she writes in her book.

She acknowledges in the book that it felt "a little sad: me talking to a bot as if it were a friend on the phone, my son staring at a screen in the back seat." But as she and her son reached their destination, hitting the beach to boogie-board, she says, it also meant she could be present and enjoy their excursion with "a little less anxiety about what I needed to do next."

'I can use that time'

Before her experiment, Stern says she'd often listen to podcasts or music while commuting; when ideas popped into her head then, she couldn't work through them as easily. With the voice tools now, "I can use that time to prepare for something," she says.

Stern says she's continued using voice mode long after she finished her planned immersion, brainstorming or workshopping interview questions while walking or driving around New York. "It's still very helpful in my own productivity and in my own thought process," she says. "It makes me less anxious, more prepared to go into a meeting or an interview."

Stern says it's particularly useful for times she wants to devote her attention to one task. "Our screens can be distracting," she says, noting the barrage of notifications that could sap your attention if you're looking at a phone or laptop. "Voice, for me at least, lets me just focus and talk through ideas."

Sometimes it boils down to convenience. If Stern is commuting later at night, a colleague might not pick up the phone. Or if she only has five minutes running from one meeting to the next, it's not enough for a call.

"AI is always available," she says, and if she's noodling on a half-baked idea, she can always talk through it with AI first to present a more refined version to people later.

'Let's not all be fooled'

Stern's advice to others trying out AI voice tools is to not feel pressured to get everything right. "Use it in moments where you're just trying to toss out an idea or brainstorm," she says. "It doesn't have to be perfect."

Her yearlong experiment to integrate AI into her work and life comes at a time when many employers are encouraging their workforces to adopt the technology. While Stern was preparing to interview others, AI can also be helpful for job seekers preparing to be interviewed, or for employees trying to summarize lengthy papers or draft presentations, for example.

More than half (57%) of employees use AI at work, according to the CNBC and SurveyMonkey Quarterly AI and Jobs Survey published in May. About a third of workers said it made them more productive, with that number jumping to 73% among those who use AI daily or weekly.

Experts caution, however, that AI sometimes hallucinates or falsifies information, so you should double-check its output. Psychologists also warn AI chatbots or companions should not take the place of human relationships.

Stern similarly recommends the AI voice tools — to a point. "We need to remember they are not human," Stern says. "Let's not all be fooled by that."